Skiing Holiday

On the last Sunday in August, in the middle of the afternoon, Seán and I realised there wasn’t that much work for us to do the next week. We texted Dave to check if he needed us for the week and his reply was “Well, not really until the ski machine is fixed. Where are you going?”. Umm, skiing we thought…

How many jobs are there where you can decide on Sunday afternoon to take off for the week?! Thanks Dave!

So, with that arranged, we packed up and headed down to Taupo on Monday morning to catch up with the lads there. The following morning we got up bright and early to get down to Mount Ruapehu and get our passes and skis. We got a three day pass at a mid week discount, which also included a one hour lesson. Already a much cheaper trip than in Europe! We had one quick run before our lesson, where I was told I was doing ok (memory of those classes in school must have come back ok) and Seán got loads of help. There was much more snow that when we were there with Susan and the weather wasn’t too bad so we had a nice day skiing loads before going back to Taupo for the night. We had planned on staying at the mountain but were ordered back as Jeanine had bought roast chicken for our dinner that night. Given that she was offering food who were we to resist! We also made use of the hot pools in Taupo AC Baths to ease our tired legs a bit.

I sent a message to Mary and Fergal telling them we were going skiing if they were around and interested so we met with them on Wednesday morning and all decided we would still ski for the day even though the weather was pretty crap. On the mountain our visibility was down to less than 10m at times so we ended up sticking to the main routes where there were plenty of people and we were happier we weren’t going to end up skiing off a cliff! The day helped my skiing as Mary and Fergal had done plenty before and trying to keep up with them sped me up a bit.

The New Zealand North Island Primary Schools Skiing Competition was scheduled to be on that day on a separate bit of the mountain, but had to be postponed because the weather caused said bit of the mountain to be closed altogether. Our little bit of the mountain was crawling with kids as a result, all of whom skied so much better than me it wasn’t fair!

That night the four of us stayed in a campsite at the bottom of the mountain. Seán and I stayed in their lodge, where we had previously stayed with Susan, and had it to ourselves complete with log fire and plenty of space to dry our gear.

Thursday morning arrived with better weather, but Mary and Fergal weren’t quite convinced it would be good enough so continued on their travels around the country. Seán and I decided we’d give it a go and were lucky enough that the day cleared quite nicely and we had the best views of the three days. As we were quite fed up of the main runs due to the day before we spent a lot more time exploring the mountain and had great fun. The schools comp was going ahead on the different slopes so it was also pretty quiet where we were.

That night we went back to Taupo and I felt sorry for my knees that had decided this skiing was too abusive to them, especially after the life long abuse of horse riding and kayaking. We made use of the hot AC Baths again on Friday and by Saturday we were good enough to go up Mount Tauhara (the little mountain outside Taupo) again. On our own this time we were up and down in under 1 hour 30 minutes and after a quick lunch we headed back to Auckland. We had left the Oosty house with strict instructions we were to be back for a family dinner that Sunday!